I wonder if there is anyone who has been immersed in cryptocurrencies for any length of time who IS NOT UTTERLY SURPRISED that one Bitcoin is now selling for around $7900, at current prices around 6.16 times one ounce of gold. You show me someone who genuinely predicted Bitcoin's meteoric rise, and I'll show you a boaster or a liar. Sure lots of people, Roger Ver, et cetera, predicted a rise. But not the magnitude, and I'm not talking about all those out declaring to-the-moon quotes to get a soundbyte and their name in the newspaper.

Personally, I have been very surprised. But maybe if I was smarter, I would not have been. When Bitcoin first overtook gold in price, I was floored - whatttt? went my brain. But maybe again that was just me being dumb.

Some people think there are about 150,000 tons of total gold in the world, which would mean there are about 4 billion, 374 million, 990 thousand ounces of gold in existence. But others think there are 2.5 million tons of gold in the world, which would mean there are about 72 billion, 915 million ounces of gold.

And so when I think of the supply of gold, which is universally considered a very rare and valuable item, should I have been surprised when Bitcoin, of which there will ever only be 21 million, surpassed gold in price? And that's without thinking of fiat currencies, like the US dollars which I understand are so plentiful or infinite in number that the Treasury and Federal Reserve tend to give them out for free to any and all polite bankers that come asking.

What has dawned on me over time is that there is clearly demand for cryptographic currencies, and that the cryptocurrencies that have, and will continue to, rise fastest in price are those with the most limited supply. It has struck me that the free-money responses of all the central banks since the GFC of 2008 have fundamentally changed the way people view fiat money, and fundamentally broken their confidence in it. And not just this, but that the solution offered by one Satoshi Nakamoto of a distributedly verified digital currency with a limited and fixed total number of units is viewed by many as a better alternative, and one that given even modest demand from early adopters and technology enthusiasts has over time rise exponentially in price.

It led me to thinking, what is the real funny-money here? Is it Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, derided by the Jamie Dimon's, the Warren Buffet's, the heroes of the old financial order? Or is it in fact the case that it is the fiat currencies, the US Dollars, the Pounds Sterling, the Yen that are the real funny-money? My personal view is that all major floating fiat currencies are now fundamentally suspect, especially those issued by countries with small central bank gold reserves, but frankly given their sheer excess of supply all of them.

That is not to say all cryptocurrencies will succeed. But I fundamentally believe some certainly will, and in my view exponentially relative to fiat currency. And to do date, and I believe continuing into at least the medium term, the cryptocurrencies that will succeed in terms of rising most in price are the ones with the most limited supply. Bitcoin is the obvious example.

The problem with Bitcoin is, it HAS ALREADY risen exponentially through multiple iterations. In my view, while anyone trading in the crypto space now would be wise to consider holding a portion of their float in Bitcoin, Bitcoin's capacity to continue to rise exponentially is limited by its relatively larger market capitalization. I'm quite confident it could double, or triple, I'd even grant a fourfold rise.

But what about the real rises, the rises of 20 fold, 50 fold, 100 fold and more that have turned many a 30-something year old man with a day job, an interest in technology, and too much time in front of the computer screen into millionaires? I don't believe Bitcoin is capable of the exponential rise that smaller market cap coins are capable of, or put another way, I think there are certain small cap coins with limited supply that have a real chance to rise at a faster rate than Bitcoin. They can outperform.

The key of this for me in the short to medium term is that such a cryptocurrency must have a good development team, and must have a low supply. At present, 'low supply' basically means coins that copied Bitcoin's maximum 21 million total supply, of which a number have. This also means that I'm rather neutral on coins with very big total supplies like XRP, and why I'm not surprised that lately Ethereum has tracked sideways while many other coins with lower total supplies have risen. It is why Litecoin with its already over 53 million coins have has never excited me. Sure Litecoin today is fifth largest by market cap on coinmarket cap, but this is misleading. It's only worth $67 per coin, whereas Dash which sits just below it in total market cap is worth $418 per coin. Remember, they were once worth about the same per coin, and they're now worth roughly equal in market cap, but PER COIN price is what we have to consider. In this regard Dash has blown Litecoin out of the water.

Now of the coins I've considered with limited supply, one stands out to me as offering the best potential for exponential rise and outperformance. That is Zencash, a zkSNARKs coin that protects transactional privacy. There are three reasons why this coin has made such a mark on my radar. One, it's worth about $22 today, and it has really only risen about threefold from its lows. What if we could have all bought Dash at $22, we'd be pretty happy today, wouldn't we, with our 20 fold profit? The second reason I like Zencash is, like Dash and Bitcoin, its total supply is limited to 21 million. The third and final reason I like Zencash is that like Dash it has a funded governance model where a portion of coins earned from mining are allocated to fund the coin's development, in other words to pay staff and contractors to develop the coin and ecosystem. It worked for Dash, and I believe it will work for Zencash.

If there's anything that has struck me about the whole cryptocurrency revolution, it has been the impact of scarcity and limited supply in catalyzing the exponential rise in value of an asset even in the face of only moderate and not yet mainstream demand. Perhaps it shouldn't have, but I must raise my hand and admit this has surprised me.

The last few months have brought great change to the cryptographic currency markets. Clear trends include the continued rapid increase in total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, and the return of Bitcoin's preeminence since Segwit adoption, which fended off Ethereum's relative rise through a flippening that was growing in momentum prior to it being clear Segwit scaling would go ahead. So we've seen renewed spotlight placed on Bitcoin, which has seen it rise in price in recent months at the expense of a relatively more stagnant Ethereum. The continued rapid growth of many coins has also been clear, in a market that has seen more or less continuous exponential growth since the start of 2016.

Privacy oriented cryptos have also enjoyed exponential growth. It was interesting to note that the major privacy oriented coins held up very well during the recent sharp sell-off in Bitcoin, a reassuring sign because the altcoin market has often amplified any fall in Bitcoin - but in the most recent drop altcoins did not underperform, and in fact privacy coins actually outperformed during the sell-off.

Dash, Monero and Zencash are all at or near their historic highs. Zcash in the high $200s remains about $100 off its historic high. One suspects everyone in the market already knew Dash had staying power, but Zencash's fourfold rise in recent months may well have gone quite a way to instill confidence in this relative newcomer and its development team. Zencash was helped by steady development, including development of its unique Secure Nodes system which is now very near the end of its testing phase and soon to be pushed out to the live network. One could argue it has also benefited from learning from Dash's proven effective funding model, which it adopted, whereby some of the block reward is paid into a fund for coin development.

Over the last several months, Zcash has been the most stagnant in terms of price, but this has been off a high base to begin with. Monero benefited from being listed on Bithumb, with a doubling on confirmation that it would get listed, an increase that it has retained and that seems locked-in for the near term at least.

Of these four coins the two that appeal most to this investor are Dash and Zencash, whereas I'm neutral on Zcash and negative on Monero (which doesn't necessarily mean I think Monero will go down, as a rising tide can lift all boats).
Let me firstly explain why I am negative on Monero, and I am not saying this in any way to antagonize the Monero community. These are just my views as a trader. I am negative on Monero because it has too much inflation and an unfinanced development model.

Let me start with inflation. It is a fairly established concept within cryptocurrency that coins with lower total supplies are generally more valuable per coin. If you go onto coinmarketcap.com and compare prices PER COIN, you can see that there is a very strong relationship between circulation and total coin supply and price.
This has nothing to do with total marketcap, and so for instance Ethereum has a much higher marketcap than Dash but at present Dash is worth around $430 to Ethereum's $330 because it has a lower circulating and maximum possible coin supply.
A lot of coins like Dash and Zencash followed Bitcoin's template of 21 million maximum coin supply. But Monero didn't, and it has a higher rate of inflation and total maximum supply. It is intuitive and common sense that the circulating supply of a currency impacts the value per unit of that currency. After all we've seen numerous times that excessive supply of currency through central bank money printing lead to hyperinflation, and indeed one of the main drivers for the high valuations of cryptocurrencies is that their maximum supplies are algorithmically fixed.

But supply is something that cryptocurrency investors sometimes overlook or do not give sufficient weight to. And it is a big problem for Monero's relative market price over the short to medium horizon outlook. To put it in perspective there are roughly the same number of coins in existence for Monero as for Bitcoin, despite Bitcoin being mined for several years before Monero was launched, and there are roughly double as many Monero as Dash in existence despite Dash launching and being mined from a few months before Monero. In this regard comparing Dash and Monero provides a useful demonstration of the importance of supply, with Dash's price per coin nearly 4 times Monero's.

The other problem with Monero is it does not have a funded governance model, unlike Dash, and unlike newcomer Zencash. Which brings me to Zencash, the other privacy coin I like. Zencash has a funded governance model where some of the block reward goes to pay for development. This is showing its value, as Zencash has tripled in price in less than a month up to the present time. In my view, this has been because its funding model facilitates development.

There is also another reason Zencash to me to appears have the most potential to rise in price. Coins with small marketcaps have more opportunity to increase by orders of magnitude than coins with large marketcaps. Dash has already over the years risen 100 fold to be worth nearly $3.5 billion. If it were to increase another 10 fold, it would immediately become the second most valuable coin after Bitcoin. Possible, but not likely. However if Zencash which currently has a marketcap of around $55 million were to increase 10 fold, it would be worth just over half a billion. This is far more likely, in my view, as there are a couple of dozen coins sitting at around the half billion plus valuation. The point is low marketcap coins have greater opportunity to grow by orders of magnitude than large marketcap coins.

Finally, Zcash, which has a solid management team. But given its already relatively high valuation, and relative price stagnation, I tend to see it either trending sideways or increasing but only moderately in the near term.

Well, these have been my thoughts on privacy oriented cryptos. Consider these thoughts, but always be your own advisor, and think critically about everything in the crypto space. Good luck, and may you make a small fortune.

There are only instant ways to get poor. I'd agree that cryptocurrency HAS HISTORICALLY been the most small investor friendly space of speculative investment now or ever. It won't continue so indefinitely.

I'm pleased so far with Eth development, particularly teh onboarding of developers and growth of ecosystem.

I didn't like the developers' embrace of some ICOs, particularly more questionable ones - is there the possibility of having some code of conduct for those employed by ethereum about their role in erc20 coins? Maybe regulators by stepping in solve this themselves.

TV is old media. The distinction between internet and TV has already broken down with  Netflix et cetera, they are now one, they are the internet.

Bitcoin isn't a company, "who" would advertise and pay for it? If they did advertise and pay for it, they'd then say Bitcoin was "there's" after all they stumped up for the marketing costs. So no, I don't think it's desirable, necessary or feasible to traditionally advertise Bitcoin.

Bitcoin advertises itself for free anyway - how many unpaid news stories, and news TV pieces, have aired about Bitcoin? "Bitcoin" didn't pay a cent for this marketing.

Start with the thought "how much money could I lose" instead of "how much money could I gain", and with that in mind get to it - it's hard, but for those with the right temperament there is profit to be made (mainly from those with the wrong temperament).

It's interesting, sort of a sideways movement. I guess the question is, which way is the next break, up or down?

Not really - I mean, think of something you'd like to buy right now, and try and use Bitcoin. Mostly, you can't. It's mostly a store of wealth like gold, although it's somewhat more usable than gold, but that's probably mostly because it's connected to the internet rather than being a lump of metal in a safe.

The thing with Bitcoin is user base - if it keeps growing strongly, that provides upward price pressure.

There three Zs, including the Big Z (Zcash), and the two small Zs (Zcoin and ZenCash) suffered pain together with the whole market with the recent Bitcoin led market sell down.

All three of these coins offer users a privacy oriented cryptocurrency, a coin where transactions between wallets can't be tracked and enumerated by third parties. This has had obvious attractions from the very start with Bitcoin, which many initially erroneously thought provided privacy, but which it is increasingly clear as time goes on doesn't. Particularly if a well organised third party is interested enough to dig deep.

Zcash, Zcoin and ZenCash s are three of the main contenders in the privacy coin space. Zcoin is technically substantially different from the other two. Zcash and ZenCash are in many ways similar technically, but they are very different in terms of their market positions. Let me be blunt and get to the point, I see serious upside to ZenCash, I'm neutral to slightly positive on Zcash, and I would avoid Zcoin like I'd avoid an aggressive Ebola infected male chimpanzee.

Let's start with the similarities. All three coins are relatively new, although ZenCash is the newest. Zcoin and Zcash actually started around the same time late last year, although I think Zcoin started about a month earlier. ZenCash started around the start of June this year. All three coins also use zero-knowledge proofs to provide reliable privacy to shield transactions from third parties.

Zcash and ZenCash conceal both the identity of sender and recipient AND the amount sent, whereas Zcoin only conceals the identity of recipients. There are reasons for both approaches, and I'm neutral on which is preferred. In fact, my reasons for preferring Zcash and ZenCash over Zcoin aren't to do with their respective theoretical technical parameters.

It's to do mostly with implementation and the development teams. I have held all three coins, so I took some interest in their development teams. There is no doubt that Zcash, which by the way has by far the highest market capitalisation, has the most well known development team of the three. Zooko Wilcox and others on the team were well known in cryptography, academia and industry well before they founded Zcash. The only real criticism of Zooko and the Zcash team I have seen are fairly sad slurs on his/their ethnicity. So, stupid criticism.

The ZenCash team is as yet less well known than Zcash's team, but many of their team members have both fairly long term presence in the cryptocurrency space combined with useful work experience in the US military and running businesses. I trust the ZenCash team and I believe in their abilities. But overall it's also fair to say Zcash's team has been higher profile historically. Despite this, I don't prefer Zcash over ZenCash, for reasons I'll explain below.

Which brings me to Zcoin's leadership team, which is basically Poramin Insom, a young Thai man postgraduated from US college, and the people he hired. Unlike for Zcash and ZenCash, I don't trust this team. There are different reasons for this. One is I think they are inexperienced, and have made bad decisions. The other is there is a credible possibility that a hack of Zcoin that inflated the coin supply by about 20% at the time was done by the developers. And third is they just keep missing the mark: the nonfunctioning wallet, and failure of their plan to implement a new mining algorithm called MTP that they bet the bank on for examples.

But aside from that, there's a market reason I don't like Zcoin. For most of its history, more than 50% of Zcoin's volume happened on the Chinese exchange BTC38. Check it, as I'm typing BTC38 accounts for 54.55% of total volume, and Bittrex most of the rest. Yes, you can see why this worries me can't you? Because china IS BANNING BITCOIN EXCHANGES. It doesn't take a Fields Medalist to work out if BTC38 gets closed by the Chinese government what that might do to Zcoin's price.

Which leads me to Zcash and ZenCash. I like them both, I trust their developers, and they've never pulled a fast one on me. You could sort of consider the relationship between Zcash and Zcoin a bit like the relationship between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. ZenCash is in some ways a "daughter" of Zcash, having used the same source code, but now slowly diverging as ZenCash adds some different features like secure nodes.

If you look at Zcash's chart on coinmarket cap, https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zcash/#charts, you'll see that it's very stable relative to Bitcoin. It really tracks closely to Bitcoin. The adventurous might even use this trend to pair trade it with Bitcoin, although I feel pair trading cryptos is probably dangerous. I like Zcash, but I prefer ZenCash. I'll tell you why. I think Bitcoin will go up for the rest of this year, and I think Zcash will go up in equal measure. But I think ZenCash has the possibility to PUMP.

ZenCash has got a market cap of $15 million to Zcash's $370 million. I mean, Zcash could pump too, but the point is IT HAS ALREADY PUMPED. It went up from $30 a coin to its current $170. I firmly believe the larger the market cap of a coin, the harder it is to get really massive pumping gains, where price doubles again and again. Zcash is probably still small enough to double, theoretically maybe to do that twice. But a nice $15 million marketcap, $7 coin like ZenCash, well in my view it has much more room for exponential rise. Or in other words outperformance of Bitcion. ZenCash has already outperformed Zcoin, it used to be worth considerably less per coin than Zcoin, but has recently overtaken it.

Well, grovelling apologies and gestures of supplication to any privacy coin I didn't mention (yeah, I don't want a firestorm from you Monero fanboys:) ).
Thank you for reading, and good luck out there in the market. Remember, if you are trading control the emotion, don't let it control you.

I try to avoid buying something newly pumped that hasn't shown a history - sure it could pump more, but it could crash. Buy before the pump feels good.

Look if they become big enough - and to me they look like they will - cryptocurrencies will have to have effective KYC/AML incorporated in some way. I don't think governments will care if it's at the exchange level - so every exchange does a reasonable job at KYC - or however. What they will care about is not having a significant percentage of financial flows - rather than the tiny and trivial percentage cryptos represent now - happening without them being able to know who the recipients are.

To me it's blindingly obvious that terrorists funders will - probably are - use cryptocurrencies to fund terrorists. This can't continue as cryptocurrencies  become increasingly adopted. There will have to be identification of people on each side. Just wait until half a dozen people are murdered in Paris, or Berlin, or London, or wherever, and the investigation shows that the attacker was funded with Bitcoin. The regulators won't play games then.

Just my view, possibly wrong.